Archived Features For September 2012

There have been many attempts to bring together the Silver Arrows from the Golden Era of Grand Prix racing, but none have done it better than the recent Goodwood Revival.

They managed to curate a class with 10 cars racing and a few other additional cars which raced in period. This included the highly original 1939 Mercedes Benz W154 from the Collier Collection in Naples, Florida and several cars from the Mercedes-Benz Collection.

Our gallery has all 10 of the Silver Arrows on track courtesy of Photographer Luc Ghys.

Today Bentley surprised almost everyone with the announcement they would re-launch their motorsports career with the new Continental GT3 which will debut next year.

Now, just a couple hours away from the opening of the Paris Motor Show, Porsche are announcing a plug-in-hybrid version of their Panamera known as the Panamera Sport Turismo.

Jaguar took it upon themselves to release the new F-Type before the show at an exclusive event in the gardens of the Musée Rodin Museum in Paris. We have since added both the Jaguar F-Type V8 S and Jaguar F-Type V6 S.

The new car receives no new performance upgrades besides those offered by the new front and rear bumpers.

To celebrate the occasion Lamborghini are also releasing the Edizione Tecnica program for the 570-4 Superleggera and Spyder Performante with unique color combinations and stripes. These will likely be the last models with the old look.

This year was no exception and the lack of Shelbys left lots of room for new players. Take for instance the Maserati Tipo 151/3 which we presume is the ex-Rosso Biano machine being raced for the first time.

We have featured every car from the TT race in our gallery courtesy of photographer Luc Ghys. He captured the many Jaguar E-Types, Ferraris SWBs and Aston Martin DB4 GTs which made this race famous.

With the upcoming Paris Motor Show this Thursday we have several new cars to talk about including the 2013 Maserati GranCabrio MC which applies the more agressive front and rear spoiler to the GranCabrio.

Abarth will use Paris to launch a bevy of new cars. They will release the 160 bhp Abarth 595 in both Turismo and Competizione specification. Additionally Abarth will launch a new series called the ‘Fuori Serie’ and their first example is this 2013 Abarth 695 ‘Fuori Serie’.

Audi will give us the new Audi S3 in Paris while we anxiously await a new RS 3 hatch. Peugeot are clearly aiming at winning the 2013 S2000 rally class with their upcoming Peugeot 208 Type R5 which will become a familiar name soon enough.

Front and center was the Ford GT40 Mark IV which he piloted to victory at the 1967 24 Hours of Le Mans. Tony Brooks also drove him around in the same Ferrari 250 TR59/60 they raced together at the 1959 edition of the same race.

Many greats were driving some of Gurney's best rides including Bob Bondurant, Sir Stirling Moss, Jackie Stewart, John Surtees and Brian Redman. Having won in F1, Indycar, Trans-Am and Can-Am, the variety of cars in the parade shows how versatile Gurney was.

Last weekend's Goodwood Revival celebrated 50 Years of the AC Cobra by staging an all-Cobra race called the Shelby Cup.

Today we are presenting the Shelby Cup as our first of several races from the Goodwood Revival. Principle photography is being provided by Luc Ghys.

Many of the COB, COX and right-hand drive Cobras are unfamiliar to us, so if you can help us identify any, please let us know. Included are the parade cars which circled during the warm-up lap and a solo photo of the Cobra which Martin Brundle wrecked.

We have assembled our feature of Bonhams' successful sale of motorcars at the Goodwood Revival as a prelude to our galleries of the races themselves.

At the very top of the sale was an original 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680 S which fetched £2,801,500 or around $4,551,000 USD. This model was one of the best designed by Ferdinand Porsche and this specific car was retained by the same family for over 80 years!

By also selling many of the top lots, this was one of Bonhams most successful sales. Most of the cars, with descriptions realized and pictures by Dirk de Jager can be found in our feature gallery.

Earlier today Lexus unveiled the LF-CC as their upcoming concept car for the Paris Motor Show. More than anything else we can't stop looking at the front grill which is easily the most controversial element on the car.

Lexus hint that the LF-CC is an evolution of the Lexus LF-LC as it applies to their future production models.

The more we look at it, the early images of this car just don't look right and are obviously the result of overly-exuberant photoshop work. For now we will reserve judgement until the real car hits the show floor later this month.

One of the first events to kick-off the Monterey week is the Carmel-by-the-Sea Concours on the Avenue. Our gallery has all our favorites from the show including the winning Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder which was later positioned in front of the Cyprus Inn.

One very special treat was the Shelby Cobra 289 ‘Dragonsnake’ CSX2472. Painted in metalic green, this car was one of three Dragonsnakes on the Monterey Penninsula. This Dragonsnake has a complete lack of badges, Stage I carburation and extra-wide fender flares to accommodate FIA-style Halibrand wheels.

Other interesting cars include the 1959 Morgan +4 Factory Lightweight, a 5000-mile 1972 Detomaso Pantera L and a 1963½ Ford Galaxie 500 Factory Lightweight R-Code. All these can be found at the top of our feature gallery..

Just minutes ago, Toyota won a historic victory by beating Audi at the 6h de São Paulo. Drivers Alexander Wurz and Nicolas Lapierre won flag to finish almost a lap ahead of the charging Audis.

The race was completely fair and the result was a case of the Audi factory team not being fast enough on the historic Interlagos circuit. They will have to adapt since this is only the third race in which Toyota and Audi have competed together.

For now we have a few pictures of the winning Toyota before we complete our gallery in the coming days.

Central to this year's event was a tribute to Bertone which included the 2012 Bertone Nuccio as a centerpiece. Not far away was the 1967 Pirana which was essentially a re-bodied Jaguar E-Type with much more 1970s lines.

As usual, we always enjoy finding the special cars among the 800-or-so Italian jewels present at Concorso. We didn't have to go far to find cars like the garage-find Iso Grifo GL which Bill Noon brought out for sale.

Ending today, Salon Privé is London's ultimate garden party. On the grounds of Syon Park in London, England, the organizers have brought together an impressive collection of cars.

Center to this year's show is the 22-car ROFGO Gulf Collection which has been built for a customer by Duncan Hamilton Co.'s Chairman, Adrian Hamilton.

Salon Privé is also honoring Carrozzeria Touring Superleggra with many of their past and present show cars. Included is the 1966 Lamborghini Flying Star II which is seldom seen in public and the new 2012 Disco Volante.

Two new cars are being shown for the first time at Salon Privé. The first is a reborn Trident known as the Iceni Grand Tourer and the second is the Tushek Renovatio T500. They both have some serious competition from the major manufacturers on the lawn.

All these great cars, plus a spectacular selection of Bugattis can be found in our feature gallery.

Sales were strong in Monterey this year and many records were blown out of the water. At the very top of the lists was the $11,770,000 achieved by Gooding & Company for their Von Krieger 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540 K Spezial Roadster.

RM had a similarly successful sale by fetching $11,000,000 for an ex-Mirage GT40. In doing so, they also broke the record for an American car at auction which was previously held by the Whitell Duesenberg. A real surprise of the RM sale was the 1974 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS which sold for a record-smashing $467,500. We also paid attention to the Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR ‘Homologation Car’ which sold for $1,100,000.

To celebrate the completion of our comprehensive 2012 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion gallery we now have some time to focus-in on this 1958 Dick Williams Sports Special.

The Reunion largely features many of the same cars from year to year, so we were ecstatic to see John Muller's new car out on course.

The Sports Special was built as a one-of show car in Kansas and later purchased for racing throughout the mid-west. John purchased the car in Florida last year after seeing it on ForgottenFiberGlass.com and later debuted it at Laguna Seca a few weeks ago.